With Jason Terry gone, Vince Carter down to be Mavs 6th man

Posted by
Inside Hoops

Oct
19

“I’m down for it,” Carter said when asked if he wanted to be the new sixth man. “I’ll come in and help the team, remain verbal — I do that well. I just try to keep us going forward and not regress. When the second unit comes on the floor, they have to keep it going. I just try to do a little bit of everything to help the team.”

Carter has all the requirements of a good sixth man. He can shoot the 3-pointer. He still has the capacity to get to the rim and he’s not afraid to do other things besides score, as his seven rebounds in 19 minutes against Phoenix on Wednesday suggest. But he also had 15 rapid-fire points in his time on the court. That sort of production looks and sounds sixth-man worthy.

Terry proved that the sixth-man job is a crucial one for the Mavericks. It started with Don Nelson more than a decade ago. He always tried to have a designated scorer off the bench, whether it was Antawn Jamison (a sixth-man of the year) or Jerry Stackhouse or Nick Van Exel.